The present invention relates to a method and system for enabling farmers and producers to record, store and retrieve information about production factor data. More specifically, the system and method of the present invention manages data related to farming that can be used in managing crops, evaluating yields and tracking crop characteristics.
Numerous production factors such as tillage practices, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, fertilizers, soil conditions and weather conditions can influence crop yield and characteristics. Farmers can better manage the crop and perhaps increase crop yield and certain characteristics of the crop, such as increased oil content or sugar content, if they can evaluate a wide variety of production factors data on a current and historical basis. Presently, monitoring of the production factors on a farm is difficult, time consuming and, in most cases, not very cost effective. In order to attempt to record data about production factors for purposes of managing farm practices and evaluating crop yield and characteristics, farmers or producers have to physically enter information, i.e., data, onto an item such as a notepad or notebook each time the farmer or producer encounters a production factor. During the life cycle of a crop, dozens to perhaps hundreds of various production factors occur that need to be recorded to create an accurate history of the various production factor events that may influence crop yield and characteristics. The process of recording and organizing all of this information physically by hand is a daunting task. Many farms are spread across hundreds, even thousand of acres of land. Farmers cannot physically travel during a day to inspect every field, worker and piece of equipment on the farm. In addition, activities such as spraying pesticides, herbicides and fungicides are conducted by independent contractors. Furthermore, dozens to perhaps hundreds of workers may perform activities on a regular basis that can influence crop production. To accurately record the hundreds of various potential production factors, farmers must be able to record the factors out in the field. Waiting to record information when a farmer returns to the office is not practical as there are simply too many events to accurately remember. In addition, because farmers cannot observe all production factors, they will have to depend on numerous workers to relay production factor information. Thus, not only is the sheer number of production factors nearly impossible to record, the likelihood of a significant error occurring is almost a certainty. Currently, to record information out in the field, farmers must use notebooks or notepads. Separate files, however, whether they be charts, documents, spreadsheets or notebooks, are needed for each production factor, e.g., a notebook for rain, one for pesticides, one for herbicides, and so on. The practicality of the notepad is restricted by location and weather. During inclement weather, the notebooks can be damaged. In addition, compiling the hand recorded information into a meaningful and useful product after the crop is harvested is extremely difficult.
Because of the high cost in both time and money in monitoring production factors for a specific crop, a producer or farmer is normally limited, or restricts himself, to collecting data on a minimal sample basis. That is, in order to gather data regarding production factors influencing a crop, the farmer will limit his data collection to historical data about only a few production factors. Similarly, the producer will normally select only one or two farms in an area to be evaluated. This limitation results in the farmer not being able to monitor a wide range of production factor data. In addition, because of the limitations of the current recordation methods, it is not possible for a farmer to acquire real-time or near real-time information about the production factors in an efficient fashion other than walking outside and looking at the crop in the field. Even this practice is limited, because a farmer usually cannot observe such factors as soil moisture content or herbicide and pesticide application by simply viewing a crop. Thus, current information about various production factors such as, for example, percent water content in the soil, availability of labor and equipment, and information about the most recent pesticide, herbicide or fungicide application is not readily available to a farmer. Current availability of this information would allow a farmer to quickly evaluate whether irrigation, tilling or spraying is necessary and what the cost would be to the farmer. It would be very desirable to evaluate these conditions without the need of the farmer having to make the numerous inquiries, investigations and assumptions that now have to be made in order to acquire the same information on production factors. Under current production factor recordation systems, the producer is not able to evaluate crop yield and characteristics on a farm-by-farm basis for an entire region. Because of this limitation, a producer is unable to make concise conclusions and strategic responses regarding the impact of various production factors on crops in a specific geographic region.
The conventional means of recording equipment use and labor and production factors potentially influencing a crop, set forth above, are not desirable. In addition, the conventional means of recording production factors do not provide a farmer or producer with the ability to acquire current information about the wide variety of production factors on a near real-time basis. As mentioned, the present method of physically recording data on a notebook or notepad is laborious, error-prone, time-consuming, costly and ineffective. The conventional methods of recording data are also not practical to use in situations where there is inclement weather. In addition, because of the difficulties in recording and organizing the data, the information collected is not of a quantity or quality that allows for a farmer or producer to evaluate production factor data on a near real-time basis or evaluate and compare crop yields and characteristics.
In view of these difficulties, it is an object of the present invention to provide a method and system for recording production factor data that does not require manual entry of information on notebooks or notepads. It is another object of the present invention to provide a method and system for recording production factor data that allows an operator of the system to acquire near real-time information about the production factors. It is a further object of the present invention to provide a method and system for recording production factor data that allows a farmer to provide access to production factor data out in the field. It is yet a further object of the present invention to provide a method and system for recording production factor data that can record hundreds and even thousands of pieces of information by a single operator of the system.